Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

2. Art and Literature

Joy and the Writing of Poetry

Why should joy be a necessary precondition for writing poetry?

Art is a thing of beauty and beauty and Ananda are closely connected, they go together. If the Ananda is there, then the beauty comes out more clearly – if not, it has to struggle out painfully and slowly. That is quite natural.

I will put in any amount of labour and that should be enough.

Labour is not enough for the things to pour down. What is done with labour only is done with difficulty, not with a downpour. The joy in the labour must be there for a free outflow. You have very queer psychological ideas, I must say.

How can I have any joy when what I write seems such poor stuff and delivered with much perspiration?

That is your confounded nature. How can the man of sorrows feel joy in anything or any self-confidence? His strain is “Oh how miserable am I! Oh how dark am I! Oh how worthless is all that I do,” etc. etc.

But apart from the M of S, you seem to suffer from a mania of self-depreciatory criticism. Many artists and poets have that; as soon as they look at their work they find it awfully poor and bad. (I had that myself often varied with the opposite feeling, Arjava also has it); but to have it while writing is its most excruciating degree of intensity. Better get rid of it if you want to write freely.

Please give some force to complete the incomplete poem I have been at. I fear to touch it lest the coming lines should fail in their quality.

Well, it's that kind of thing that stands in the way.

The first portion I wrote quickly and almost dosing. Why dosing?

This is a medical spelling.

Probably in order that your waking mind might not interfere. Dozing is often a form of semi-samadhi in which the waking mind retires and the subliminal self comes bobbing up.

14.12.1936